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Marking its 30th year of providing affordable housing services in the City this spring, the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation is centering its annual gala and awards dinner around a theme demonstrated by influential civic actions taking shape across the nation. SFHDC’s 30th Anniversary Gala and Awards Dinner, will take place Friday, May 11, at the California Academy of Sciences. The Bayview-based SFHDC is a nonprofit community organization that has provided affordable housing, financial empowerment, supportive services and economic development to low-income communities of color since 1988.

We continue to see and hear lies coming from U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies in respect to their hyper-surveillance of groups and individuals who are New Afrikans and who engage in constitutionally protected activities such as protests, rallies, marches, litigation and political efforts. With this essay, I seek to give a detailed explanation into the ongoing campaign of retaliation and harassment the members of the NABPP-PC have been subjected to.

I am one of the leading voices of prisoners throughout the United States who are calling for the amending of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a total and final abolition of slavery in Amerika. An organization located here in the USA, Raleigh, North Carolina, to be exact, is educating, organizing and mobilizing as many people as possible to support and/or participate in the Millions 4 Prisoners March on Washington, D.C., on Aug. 19, 2017. The organization is called I Am We.

Good morning and welcome to Wanda’s Picks, a Black arts and culture program with the African Sister’s Media Network. We are joined in the studio by Robert King, Albert Woodfox and Malik Rahim. Welcome to the show. Today we are going to be talking about the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March on Washington. We can talk about solitary confinement, political prisoners, the 13th Amendment. We can talk about what the need is for having such an event.

Since long before the mainstream media was willing to acknowledge the reality of mass incarceration, systemic racism and economic inequality, the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper has been challenging the dominant narrative by amplifying the voices of people on the margins of society, particularly Black people, poor people and prisoners. Now, more than ever, independent media like the Bay View is in danger as the Trump administration has declared “war with the news media.” In order for the Bay View to continue speaking truth to the abusers of power, we need your financial contribution.

We, the people, have to realize that our current contradictions are not just about economics, but instead are about being able to speak truth to the powers that be. Case in point, if we hadn’t been able to express in great detail what we prisoners were suffering from while being held in solitary confinement and have our letters published in the Bay View, then our voice would have never been heard. But because the Bay View was there for us, the world came to our defense.

Prisons in some states are withholding newspapers from inmates amid a strike against prison conditions and billions of dollars worth of prison labor. The passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865 formally abolished slavery, but with a stipulation that enabled plantation owners to use prisoners as a replacement for the lost labor. As a group called the Free Alabama Movement rallied for a Sept. 9 labor strike in spring, prison authorities across the country began clamping down on news and information in ways that the ACLU says may be in violation of the First Amendment.

In a recent article entitled “We don’t heel, we kneel,” I wrote about the importance of supporting Colin Kaepernick as he endeavors to draw attention to the systemic racism, oppression and police terror that Black folks in this country are subjected to. It took a little time for people to engage in the act of “taking a knee,” but one by one they got on board. Now that people are following Kap’s lead, the objective is to get them to put their money where their knee is.

Statewide Coordinated Actions to End Solitary Confinement (SCATESC) began March 23, 2015. Actions were held in California from San Diego to Arcata (Arcata-Eureka, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, San Jose, Santa Cruz) and Philadelphia, Penn. Activists in more locations will be joining in on April 23 and the 23rd of each month. Below is a report from just one locality, Santa Cruz, which took a creative approach.

Sin Barras organized the Cages Kill-Freedom Rally to save lives after six people locked up in the Santa Cruz County Jail have died since August 2012. The Jan. 24 rally was endorsed by a wide range of local, statewide, national, and international groups, demonstrating that murder and torture is happening in jails and prisons everywhere, not just in Santa Cruz. Stop the abuse and torture in the Santa Cruz County Jail and jails and prisons everywhere!

This letter, Re: Comments on CDCR’s Proposed Regulations: Obscene Material, from attorney Leila Knox of Bryan Cave LLP, one of the world’s largest law firms, was emailed and mailed on Nov. 7, 2014, to Regulation and Policy Management Chief Timothy M. Lockwood, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, Calif. 94283-0001. The comment period is now closed.

This morning, Monday, Oct. 27, 2014, at 8 a.m., I woke up to sounds of hard banging at my door. I thought it was the person to fix my broken heater, but once I looked outside my peephole I saw what I thought were two sheriff’s officers. My heart pounded thinking something terrible had happened to my child if two officers are standing outside my door with full blown police gear on.

As I sit in Glen Dyer Facility (North Alameda County) fighting federal weapons charges, I find comfort and inspiration from the pages of the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper. As a kid raised in Hunters Point, I can remember passing out bundles of these same newspapers. I can remember the stern look Mr. Willie Ratcliff would give my friends and me before telling us to make sure we deliver all of our papers.

This letter, from attorney Leila Knox of Bryan Cave LLP, one of the world’s largest law firms, has been submitted to the California Department of Corrections. “Under this regulatory scheme,” she writes, “publications such as the Bay View could be impermissibly banned from within state prisons.” Readers are encouraged to submit their own comments from their own perspective. Comments are being accepted until Tuesday, June 17, at 5 p.m., and can be easily submitted until that time at http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/.

The motivation to organize the National Afrikan-Amerikan Family Reunion Association, NAAFRA, a family movement in-gathering all New Afrikan families with reunions and those not yet experiencing the joy of reunion activity in their family into a single family movement charged with the fire of change and coming forward with a passion of love and pride in being Afrikan.

The only defense that can protect the people is to assemble the power of the people. We are our only defense. We have suffered enough injustice at the hands of a very evil system – CDCr and PBSP – and it is time that we prisoners express that pain and suffering by all means at our disposal, because CDCr and PBSP are censoring SF Bay View in order to censor prisoners, because we are exposing cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners. We collectively commend and value the courage and commitment as well as the principled stand that the SF Bay View is taking to speak truth to power.

We are seeking your participation in a very unusual event – a day-long grassroots lobbying visit to the California State Capitol led by formerly incarcerated people on May 13, 2013. We invite our brothers and sisters, supporters, allies, friends and comrades to join us and support the formerly incarcerated members of our community who have been rendered silent.

Celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Bay View by sending its love and light to a prisoner behind enemy lines. One prisoner writes, “The Bay View has been a source of inspiration and life for me. It enables me to see people still care and Blacks are still fighting for justice.”

“POOR’s rule from the beginning was to break down the myth of objectivity and the implicit ‘other’ stance of journalism. We accomplished this through the integration of self, the use of ‘I’ in every story,” explains Tiny – Lisa Gray-Garcia. POOR needs your help right now. Become a Revolutionary Donor today!